This
painting illustrates the Prophet Obadiah’s vision of the utter and absolute
destruction of Esau’s family line, and the fall of his nation state, Edom, as
he and his people are interchangeably called. The Book of Obadiah is the
shortest prophetic book being only one chapter long containing twenty one
sentences. The prophecy takes place during or shortly after the Babylonian
expulsion of the southern Kingdom. Judah’s fresh stinging exilic wound is now
vigorously salted by their Brother Esau’s final and most bitter betrayal.

It has
been a long and tortuous relationship for Isaac’s twin boys from their
initial in-utero battles which continued throughout their lives, and was
extended by their descendants, long after they departed, for nearly a
millennium. Their sibling rivalry was birthed and forged on the anvil of the
competing marital relationship between their parents, Isaac and Rebecca.

This
is not only a story of Esau’s end; it is also the story of what appears
momentarily to be Jacob’s demise. The northern kingdom composed of ten out of
twelve tribes of Jacob has already vanished, antedating Esau’s death. The
Southern Kingdom, composed of two remaining tribes of Jacob, is now being
expelled by the Babylonians, and it appears to the world, and especially to
Esau, that it is the end of them, and hence the absolute destruction of
Jacob.

This
is a historical experience which the Edomites savor with great relish and
celebrate with gusto, finally tasting absolute supremacy and victory over
their rival brother Jacob with whom they have competed over land,
inheritance, blessings, and power, and most importantly, the biggest prize of
all, elusive paternal love. Jacob’s conniving may have gotten him the
first-born blessing, but in the end it is Esau who snatches victory from the
jaws of defeat by living to witness the death and destruction of his little
back-stabbing brother, or so it seems.

In
this painting Obadiah is portrayed as the huge cracked mountainous background
face (explanation below). The entire book of Obadiah admonishes Edom for
their terrible behavior vis-ą-vis their brother Jacob, and because of this
they will be utterly destroyed. “There will not be a single survivor from the
house of Esau” (Written in yellow Hebrew on Obadiah’s bottom lip at the
bottom of the painting).

Obadiah
and God are particularly irked that when Edom’s brother Judah is in trouble with
the Babylonians, not only do they not help; they take part in dividing the
spoils. “For the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame will cover you…
In the day that you stood aloof when foreigners entered into his gates, and
cast lots upon Jerusalem, you were just like them. You should not have
rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction, neither
should you have spoken proudly on the day of their distress. You should not
have entered into the gate of my people, and you should not have laid hands
on their things. Neither should you have stood in the crossway to cut off
those that tried to escape, neither should you have delivered those that did
remain in the day of distress”.

The
visual inspiration for this painting is based on the analogy drawn by Obadiah
between Esau and his children, the nation of Edom, to an eagle and his nest.
“The pride of your heart has beguiled you, you that dwell in the clefts of
the rock (Obadiah’s face in this painting). My habitation is high, he said in
his heart. Who will bring me down to earth?” (Not written in this painting)

“If
you make your nest as high as an eagle and if amidst the stars you shall
place your nest, from there I will bring you down, says God” (written in blue
Hebrew on the upper eagle’s nest in this painting).

In
this painting, Esau is the winged central figure with an eagle talon-like
left hand. He is falling down, brought down by God, from his heavenly abode
which is perched atop a very high mountain, which happens to be Obadiah’s head.
The nest, inhabited by the Esau eagle and his eggs, represents the entire
nation of Edom. The nest is being violently shaken and stirred by a divinely
ordained mountain quake; in this case the shake of Obadiah’s head. As a
result, the nest’s entire contents; eagle, eggs and eaglets teeter and fall
out of their habitat, and plunge to their certain deaths, spelling the end of
their tribe.

The
Edomite eaglets are in different stages of gestation. Some lay cocooned and
un-hatched inside their eggs. Others are at different hatching stages with
some only having their heads piercing their shells. Others also have other
hatching appendages including hands, hands and legs, wings, wings and feet,
and other permutations of the above. Many of the baby eaglets are born with
different varieties of mixed and matched eagle and human appendages. Many are
born with an Edomite back-pack filled with arrows .As they are plummeting
downward, upside down, their arrows due to gravity fall down separately. All
the eggs, no matter what gestational stage they’re at, are cracked. They are
all bleeding blood and/ or seeping yolk symbolizing their divine individual
and collective breakage. None of them are unbroken, all will die.

Each
one falls to their deaths alongside their winged progenitor.

The
significance of Esau’s wings is two fold. He is compared to an eagle, hence
he has wings. Furthermore, this also symbolizes that he is the angel that
Jacob wrestled with (See painting, Labor Day). Hence he is also a falling
fallen angel.

The
name Obadiah in Hebrew is linguistically linked to one of Esau’s names, and
hence the name Obadiah is not merely coincidental. In Hebrew, Obadiah’s name
is spelled “EVDYH”, or broken down to its two root components; “EVeD” (slave
or servant), of YH (God). This parsed name is written in yellow and red
Hebrew on Obadiah’s blue irises of his eyes. The term “EVED” can have quite
negative connotations i.e. a slave e.g. a slave in Egypt. Alternatively EVED
can have positive spiritual connotations, as in EVED (servant) of God. Thus
the word EVED depending on the grammatical context can be either pejorative
or complimentary.

Esau
in scripture is twice referred to as an EVED. When his mother is pregnant
with him and Jacob, she beseeches God who tells her that two nations are
struggling within her, and that the elder will serve (YaEVD) the younger.

When
Isaac blesses both Jacob and Esau, he tells each of them that Esau will serve
(YaEVD) Jacob. Hence Esau is an EVED of Jacob in as much as Obadiah is an
EVED of God. In this painting, this appellation of Esau’s is written in red
Hebrew on his torso. Hence both Obadiah and Esau are EVEDs. One is an honored
servant, and the other is a despised slave. Thus the object of Obadiah’s
prophecy is also the root of his name.

The text
also has an interesting linguistic play on the name EDOM. It contextually
uses the word EYDOM for “destruction”, drawing an analogy between the
definition of Edom and his impending destruction. Both these words are
written in green Hebrew on the shell of the central white eaglet. EDOM is
written downward on the right, and EYDOM is written downward on the left,
both words sharing the same first and last letters. One could take the
different root definitions of EDOM one step further. The root of the word
Edom is also ADAM, i.e. MAN, who is both destructive and destructible.

Written
in the black space in-between Obadiah’s upper and lower lips are the words of
Obadiah’s admonition to Esau. “You are much despised.” In response, Esau is
illustrated with tears welling in his eyes.

Indeed,
Esau is probably the greatest tragic figure in the Bible. Jacob finagles both
birthright and primo blessing from him, yet when Esau meets up with Jacob
many years later, he embraces Jacob, kisses him, forgives and forgets. Truly
he is the son of Abraham and Isaac. But Esau’s descendants are not as
forgiving as him. They can never forgive Jacob’s multiple slights to their
great father, nor can they forgive or forget. Hence they can not and will not
extend any semblance of filial assistance or love to their brother’s
descendants.

And
how exactly did Jacob ever assist Esau? In what way did Jacob ever make up
for what was unjustly taken from Esau? How did Jacob ever make amends? What
exactly does Edom owe Jacob? Doesn’t filial love go both ways? Esau mightily
loved his father; nevertheless it was Esau who was exiled from heart, hearth
and home by the alliance forged between Jacob and his mother. A millennium
later, Esau is both cursed and doomed by God because he could not bring himself
to forgive Jacob for having come between him and his father. Dancing on
Jacob’s grave (albeit prematurely) was one of the many jealous acts of
vengeance which Esau thought was well deserved. Throughout Esau’s existence
he is and always was a sad, noble and tragic figure. --All text is copyrighted, Nathan
Moskowitz 2004-2007. For more information,
please e-mail:

Background for Jacob and
Esau: Edom, the nation sprung from Esau, always proved antagonistic to
Israel,
despite their brotherhood as sons of Isaac. Many prophets were entrusted
with
messages of condemnation directed against Edom (Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel,
Malachi), which often drew attention to Edom's self-sufficiency and
pride as the root of his sin. In Obadiah, the prophet seems to take up an
existing
prophecy of doom against Edom (vv. l b-4 and phrases within vv. 5-9)-perhaps
the same oracle as appears
in Jeremiah 49.7-22--and notes how terribly it was
being fulfilled and with what just retribution. Obadiah then relates this
particular
doom to the judgment of all the nations in the imminent Day of the Lord,
when
the escaped remnant of Israel will be alike the sphere of
salvation and the instrument of the Lord's rule over all the nations.

Short as it is, this
prophecy sets out and illustrates the foundation truths of
Biblical revelation: the sovereign rule of God, which will be universally
acknowledged (v. 21); the election to blessing of Israel, the people of God
(v. 17b); this
election fulfilled through a remnant (v. l7a) who will be the arm of
God's
strength from Mount Zion; the culmination of God's purposes in "the Day
of the
Lord" which, while bringing vindication to His own and a
proper enjoyment of
their promised land of rest, will bring condemnation
to the enemy and the oppressor, of whom Edom is here the type (v. 15).

Obadiah, the
shortest book in the Old Testament, is the pronouncement of doom against an
ancient and long-forgotten nation, the land of Edom. But there is more to
this book than that. The Scriptures have that beautiful faculty of appearing
to be one thing on the surface, but on a deeper level, yielding rich and
mighty treasures. That is certainly true of this amazing book of Obadiah.

We know very little
about Obadiah except that he was one of the minor prophets. There is a
reference to a prophet Obadiah in the days of Elijah and Elisha and there is
some thought that perhaps he is the same man. The name Obadiah was a very
common name among the Hebrews though, and it is very likely this is not the
same prophet, for in this book Obadiah mentions the day when Jerusalem was
destroyed, captured by the alien armies, and that occurs long after the time
of Elijah and Elisha. So most Bible commentators believe the author of this
book was a contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah, the last of the prophets
before Israel went into captivity.

The name Obadiah
means "the servant of Jehovah;" he fulfills the position of a
servant. He comes and does his work and fades into the background; he
delivers his message and he is gone. And that is about all we know about the
man behind this book.

The book of Obadiah
tells the story of two nations, the nation of Israel and the nation of Edom,
the country to the south of Israel that is now usually referred to as the
Negev or Negeb. Through this ancient land of Edom the Israelites marched as they
came into the land of Israel out of the captivity and slavery of Egypt. As
they came into the land they had difficulty with the Edomites; they were
enemies of Israel from its very beginning.

But behind the story
of these two nations, this book tells the story of two men. Every nation in
the Bible is a lengthened shadow of its founder, and the two men behind the
nations Israel an Edom were twin brothers. Do you know who they are? Jacob
and Esau. Jacob was the father of Israel, and Esau, his twin brother, became
the father of the Edomites. In the story of these nations you also have the
extended story of these two men, Jacob and Esau. God, in a sense, has put
Jacob and Esau into an enlarger and blown them up to national size. As the
prophet discusses this you can see that the story of these two men continues;
Israel is still Jacob and Edom is still Esau.

Jacob and Esau were
in perpetual antagonism. We read in the book of Genesis that even before they
were born, they struggled together in their mother's womb. That antagonism
marked the lives of these two men, and, consequently, the lives of their
descendants, the two nations of Israel and Edom.

And as you recall
from Genesis, Jacob was mother's darling and Esau was daddy's little man, and
there was one unending conflict between the two of them which did not end
with the lives of these men. The nations carried on this same conflict, and
all the way from Genesis through Malachi there is the threat of struggle and
unbroken antagonism between them. In the book of Malachi (remember, Genesis
records the beginning of these nations), the last book of the Old Testament,
God says, "I have loved Jacob but I have hated Esau." (Malachi 1:2)
Why does the story of these two men come to a focus here in this little
prophecy of Obadiah? What is so important about these two men and these two
nations? Well, that is what the book of Obadiah makes very clear to us. In
the New Testament we discover that there is a perpetual antagonism within the
nature of the Christian. In Galatians 5:17 we are told that the flesh lusts
against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh; they are opposed to one
another.

God is a great
illustrator. He is always using pictures for us so that we can understand
truth more easily, more graphically. We are children in this respect. We like
to have a picture. We would rather see something than hear it, so God has
many pictures. He has taken these two men and the subsequent nations that
came from them and used them through the Bible as a consistent picture of the
conflict between the flesh and the spirit -- Jacob and Esau, Israel and Edom.

(This, by the way,
is a wonderful key to Bible study. Have you learned to recognize what we
might call interpretational constants that run throughout the scriptures?
There are certain names and figures, or metaphors and similes that, once used
to symbolize a thing, maintain that characteristic and that reference all the
way through the Bible, wherever they are used. You know how this is true of
certain items, certain material things, like oil. Wherever oil is used
symbolically in Scriptures it is a picture of the Holy Spirit. Wine is always
a picture of joy in the Scriptures. Leaven is always a picture of evil. These
two men, Jacob and Esau, and the nations Israel and Edom, always appear as a
picture of a struggle between the flesh and the spirit that is going on in
our own lives as believers. Esau lusts against Jacob, and Jacob against Esau;
the two great principles are irreconcilably opposed to one another.)

Obadiah turns the
spotlight first on Esau, who is the man of the flesh, and Edom, the proud
nation that came from the flesh, and he answers the question "Why does
God hate Esau?" The trouble with Esau, the prophet says, is this (verse
3):

The pride of your
heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock,
whose dwelling is high, who say in your heart, "Who
will bring me down to the ground?" (Obadiah 1:3 RSV)

The trouble with
Esau is pride. Pride is the root of all human evil, and pride is the basic
characteristic of what the Bible calls the flesh that lusts against, wars
against, the Spirit. The flesh is a principle that stands athwart God's
purposes in human life and continually defies what God is trying to
accomplish. Each of us has this struggle within us if we are Christians, and
its basic characteristic is revealed here as pride. That is the number one
identifying mark of the flesh.

Proverbs 6:16 says:
"There are six things which the Lord hates, seven which are an
abomination to him." And what is number one on the list? A proud look.
And everything else that follows is a variation of pride. Those that are
swift to run after mischief, he that spreads lies and slander and discord
among brothers -- all these things are manifestations of that single basic
evil, pride. This is the satanic nature which was implanted in the human
race; all who are born of Adam have this congenital twist of pride, the
independent ego that evaluates everything only in terms of its importance or
its unimportance to self. The universe centers around self, the rival god.
That is pride. That is Esau; that is Edom. It can appear in our lives in ten
thousand ways, but you will find some common expressions of it here in this
book of Obadiah.

One way it may be
expressed is in self-sufficiency (verses 3, 4):

... who say in your
heart, "Who will bring me down to the ground?" Though
you soar aloft like the eagle, though your nest is set among the
stars, thence I will bring you down, says the Lord. (Obadiah 1:3b-4
RSV)

Here is the man who
says, "Nobody can touch me. Who is going to upset me? My plans are all
laid out. I am able to carry through what I set out to do." This
attitude of self-sufficient ability is a mark of pride. And the Lord says
that "though you soar aloft like the eagle, though your nest is set
among the stars, yet I am able to bring you down."

The reference in
this book to "you who live in the clefts of the rock" is a very
literal reference to the nation of Edom. If you have had the privilege of
visiting the Holy Land, you may have gone down into the Negev area and visited
the city of Petra, the rose-red city of the dead. This amazing city is
approached through a tremendous fissure that runs for a mile or more right
through the rock, a narrow file only a few yards wide that brings you at last
into an open place where temples have been carved out of the living rock --
giant temples with doorways in them some 25-30 feet high. That was the
capital of Edom. That was the ancient city, whose people felt that because of
these natural defenses they were impregnable. They lifted up their hearts in
pride and, as the Lord speaking through the prophet says, the pride of their
heart is deceived; they thought that nothing could overthrow them, but God
said it would be done. Just a few years after our Lord's day, the Romans came
in and destroyed the cities of Edom and took this impregnable fortress. It
has been in ruins ever since.

This kind of
self-sufficiency is clearly evident in the man who says, "I don't need
God. I can run my own life without God, in my own wisdom, my own strength, my
own abilities, my own talents -- that is enough. that is all I need to make a
success in life." But self-sufficiency is also seen in the Christian who
says, "Well, I need God, yes, in times of danger and fear and pressure,
but I am quite able, thank you, to make my own decisions about the girl I am
going to marry, or the career I am going to follow, or the friends that I
have, or the car that I buy or anything else like that." That is the
same spirit of self sufficiency, isn't it?

The thing that
characterized the Lord Jesus Christ and marked him as continually opposed to
this spirit of self-sufficiency was his utter dependence on the Father. We
Christians have to learn that if there is any area of our life where we think
that we've got what it takes to do without God, it is in that same area that
we are manifesting the flesh, the pride of Edom. When you step into your
office on Monday morning and you have been a fine Christian on Sunday and all
through the weekend, but on Monday morning you say, "Now I am in charge.
I know what to do here. I don't need the Bible. I don't need God. I don't
need my religion to help me here. I know exactly how to run this
business," you are manifesting this same spirit of Edom, this spirit of
self-sufficiency. In many areas of their lives Christians live as though God
were dead, they believe in God, but live as though he were dead, they live
without any sense of dependency upon his wisdom and his strength.

Another form of
pride is found in this little book, too (verse 10):

For the violence
done to your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you, and you
shall be cut off for ever. (Obadiah 1:10 RSV)

Violence is a form
of pride; the man who strikes his wife, a child who has been beaten, a baby
whose bones have been broken, and who has been damaged internally. What is
behind this violence of the human heart? An unbroken ego, a spoiled and
cowardly spirit. Pride is centered only on self and it strikes out against
anything that dares to challenge its supreme reign in life. I have been in a
Christian home and seen a woman with black eyes and bruises on her legs and
arms because her Christian husband, who was a Sunday School teacher, had
beaten her. Where does this violence come from? It is from Edom. It is the
pride of the flesh.

Here is another form
of pride (verse 11):

On the day that you
stood aloof, on the day that strangers carried off his wealth,
and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem,
you were like one of them. (Obadiah 1:11 RSV) [You
just stood and watched.]

Indifference is a
form of pride. I think this is by far one of the major causes of marital
difficulty. In the constant stream of people who have come to see me about
problems in their marriage, almost invariably, somewhere along the line, I
hear the complaint. "Well, he is simply indifferent to me. He doesn't
care about me. He ignores me." Or, "She pays no attention to me.
She isn't interested in the things that I am interested in." Isn't it
strange that these things can be true in Christian homes? And how quickly it
comes in after courtship. During the courtship it is, "What are you
thinking about? Tell me what you would like?" But when marriage comes,
it is, "Where's dinner? Where is the paper? What's on TV?" And the
concern is entirely different. Why? Well, Esau is at work -- that's why. The
force in human life that God hates is Esau.

There is yet another
form of pride that we read about in Obadiah (verses 12,13):

But you should not
have gloated over the day of your brother in the day of his
misfortune; you should not have rejoiced over the people of Judah
in the day of their ruin; you should not have boasted in
the day of distress. You should not have entered the gate of my people
in the day of his calamity; you should not have gloated over
his disaster in the day of his calamity; you should not have
looted his goods in the day of his calamity. (Obadiah 1:12-13 RSV)

God charges Edom
with the sin of gloating as a manifestation of this basic problem of pride.
Notice how you hear this so frequently in children who haven't yet learned to
cover up what they feel with a subtle varnish of politeness: "Yay, yah,
yah, good for you. You had it coming!" Did you ever say that in your own
heart about somebody? "You had it coming." You were gloating over
them. Adults learn to disguise this sometimes, but it comes out once in a
while. You hear that the boss is sick, and you say. "Nothing trivial, I
hope." What do you say when someone fails and you hear about it? Do you
ever say, "Well, I told you so. I knew that would happen. I expected it
all along"? That is the sense of gloating, you see. I remember reading
of the hypochondriac who had written on his tombstone the words, "I told
you I was sick."

Now, what causes
this? Why do we like to rub salt on another's wounds? What is behind this
perverse delight we take in another person's failure or his faults? It is
Esau in us. The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the
flesh. In our pride and unconcern we don't care what happens to someone else,
as long as everything is all right with us.

Another
manifestation of pride is exploitation (verse 14):

You should not have
stood at the parting of the ways to cut off his fugitives; you
should not have delivered up his survivors in the day of distress.
(Obadiah 1:14 RSV)

When calamity fell,
Edom took advantage of it. The Edomites moved in on a fallen people, a
captured people, took advantage of the fact that these were fugitives, and
used their trouble and their misery to their own advantage. They delivered up
the survivors in the day of Israel's distress. They took unfair advantage.
God hates it when we utilize another's weakness or bad luck to our advantage.

Have you ever heard
anyone say, "Well, I had a contractor bid on some work I would like him
to do, and the fellow made a mistake and he has underbid this. But I am going
to hold him to It. After all, I've got the contract. He signed it and I am
going to hold him to it"? That is taking advantage of another's mistake.
We find this spirit coming up so easily when something like that happens. We
say, "Oh, that is your hard luck. Finders keepers, losers weepers."
We try to move in and take advantage of another's distress.

"Oh," you
say, "I could never do a thing like that." Well, how many of you
are on the lookout for some old coin, or some antique chair, or some widow
selling her husband's golf clubs who doesn't know the value of them? What a
bargain! Move in on that and take advantage of it.

Well, this is only a
partial listing of the ways of Esau, the man God hates, but the worse thing,
the tragedy of Esau, is back in verse 3, where God says,

The pride of your
heart has deceived you. (Obadiah 1:3 RSV)

You are this way,
but you don't know it. Blind to your own problems, you go on thinking that
everything is fine, but suddenly everything falls to pieces, just as it did
here to Edom (verses 6, 7):

How Esau has been
pillaged, his treasures sought out! All your allies have
deceived you, they have driven you to the border; your
confederates have prevailed against you; your trusted friends have set
a trap under you -- there is no understanding of it. (Obadiah 1:6-7
RSV)

That is the terrible
thing about pride. It traps us. It tricks us. It trips us up. We don't
recognize it until we are too late. We go stumbling along in our pride and
arrogance and vanity and we think we are doing fine. Everyone else can see
the trouble we are having, but we go blissfully on, sawing away on the limb,
totally unaware that the limb we are sawing on is the limb we are sitting on,
until it falls down and we are suddenly exposed.

Remember the story
of The Emperor's New Clothes? The emperor advertised throughout his
kingdom for a tailor to make him an especially good suit, and a man came and
told him he would make him the finest suit that had ever been made. He
brought a piece of cloth and showed it to the emperor, only the trouble was,
there was nothing there. He held up his hands as though holding a piece of
cloth, and he said to the emperor, "You know, this cloth has a really
remarkable quality. Only the pure in heart can see it. If you have an evil in
your heart, you can't see this cloth, but if your heart is pure, then you can
see it. Now, surely, sir, you can see it?" The emperor couldn't see
anything, but he nodded his head and said, "What beautiful cloth! What
remarkable cloth. That is exactly what I am looking for." And so the man
made him a suit from this cloth and he came and put it on him and the poor
emperor stood there naked, fancying he had these clothes on. He called his
courtiers in to admire him (of course he told them of the special quality of
the cloth) and they too said, "Oh my, what a beautiful suit!"

No one would admit
that he couldn't see a thing until the emperor, in his pride and his vanity,
decided to go out to the public streets of the city so everyone could see
him. There goes the poor ignorant fellow, strutting along in his nakedness,
and the whole city out there admiring him -- all but a little boy who stood
up and said, "But the emperor doesn't have anything on."

Now what can you do
about this? This is where we live, isn't it? We all have this problem of the
flesh within. Well, that is not the end of the story (verses 15,16):

For the day of the
Lord is near upon all the nations. As you have done, it shall be done
to you, your deeds shall return on your own head. For as you
have drunk upon my holy mountain, all the nations round about shall
drink; they shall drink, and stagger, and shall be as though
they had not been. (Obadiah 1:15-16 RSV)

In other words, God
has determined judgment upon Edom, and there is no escaping it. Does that
sound like destruction? Well, it is -- for Esau. There is no hope for Esau;
there is no way out. The judgment of God is absolutely inescapable for Esau.
God is forever set against him. One of the grandsons of Esau was a man named
Amalek, who withstood the Israelites on their way into Canaan. In Exodus
17:14-16 it is recorded that God said to Moses, "I will utterly blot out
the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven." And Moses says, "The
Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation." That is
what God is saying about the flesh. He will never make peace with it.

But the day of
triumph is for Jacob (verses 17, 18):

But in Mount Zion
there shall be those that escape [Mount Zion is
Jerusalem, or Jacob], and it shall be holy; and the house of
Jacob shall possess their own possessions. The house of Jacob shall be
a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau
stubble; they shall burn them and consume them, and there shall
be no survivor to the house of Esau; for the LORD has spoken. (Obadiah
1:17-18 RSV)

And finally (verse
21):

Saviors shall go up
to Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord's.
(Obadiah 1:21 RSV)

This is what you
might call the ruthlessness of God. He has his heart set to destroy Esau.
After all, that is the whole story of the coming of the Holy Spirit into the
human heart; he has come to destroy Esau and all these characteristics of the
flesh. He will destroy them in those who are his and bring Jacob into the
full inheritance of all his possessions -- and the weapon he uses is the
judgment of the cross.

Isn't it interesting
that when you get to the New Testament you find these same two principles
personified again in two persons who meet in the pages of the Gospels face to
face. In the last week of our Lord's sufferings, he stands before Herod.
Herod, we are told, is an Idumean, which is another spelling of Edom -- he is
an Edomite. Jesus before Herod -- the representative of Jacob and the
representative of Esau face to face. Herod the Edomite, proud, arrogant and
rebellious, watches the cruel mockery of the soldiers as they strip the Lord
down and dress him in his royal robes. The Gospel writer says that Herod
plied him with many questions, but for the son of Esau there is no answer
from the son of Jacob. He has nothing to discuss with him. There can be no
compromise. God has nothing to say to the flesh, nothing at all except
judgment.

And what is the
final issue of that account? The prisoner went out to a cross and a grave,
and from it he emerged a king; but King Herod went on to disgrace, exile,
and, finally, to a grave in a foreign country. Beyond that he is a prisoner,
bound by chains of his own making, eternally.

Now which are you? A
king or a prisoner? Is Esau or Jacob ruling? Do you know about this ruthless
cross that denies you any right to self-sufficiency, to self-expression, to
self-advantage, to self-exploitation, to all these things -- denies you
indifference, gloating, or self-righteousness? Have you learned yet to reign
with Christ, not in heaven, but right now? Have you learned to possess your
possessions -- as Jacob is intended to do -- so that the kingdom shall be the
Lord's, the kingdom of your life? Or are you still a prisoner, like Herod,
fancying yourself to be free, on a throne in authority, but still bound by
unbreakable chains because you refuse to pass through the death that sets you
free?

Prayer:

Our Father, search
our hearts in this moment, as we see how vividly this Old Testament
illustration sets before us the truth of the New Testament. As we stand face
to face with the mirror of your Word, we have seen ourselves. May we not be
as those James describes who look in the mirror and see themselves and go
their way and straight away forget what manner of men they were. God grant to
us the grace to yield to you and to the cross and its judgment upon all the
self-life, that we may know the glory of this mighty truth and possess our
possessions, so that the kingdom shall be the Lord's. In his name we pray.
Amen.